1. Technical Field
The present invention pertains to impact detection on a target object. In particular, the present invention pertains to detection of impacts and subsequent effects on a target object and prioritizing transmission of information from various sensors to a receiving station.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Various applications may employ detection of impacts on an object to assess damage, structural integrity or other properties of the object affected by an impact. The impact detections may further provide information relating to properties of an article impacting the object. For example, ballistic missile defense flight target testing employs impact detection on a target to assess the nature of a missile impact (e.g., missile accuracy, lethality of an impact, damage to target object, etc.). A related art system for impact detection includes a sensor package that employs a fiber optic grid attached to a target object (e.g., a ballistic missile target, etc.) and an electronics package that monitors the fiber optic grid, records the impact location and sends data through a telemetry stream or link before total physical destruction of the target. An exemplary type of fiber optic grid system for detecting impact locations is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,013,908 (Chang), the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The basic function of the related art system is to sense and record the initial impact location on a missile target based on an engagement from an intercept vehicle or missile. The system performs these tasks within approximately ten microseconds (e.g., prior to destruction of the target). When the intercept vehicle impacts the target, optical fibers within the fiber optic grid attached to the target are severed and the sensor package determines the impacted fibers sustaining damage. The system reports the time sequence of optical fiber severs to a ground telemetry receiving station via the remote telemetry link. Since the optical fibers are arranged on the target in a predetermined pattern, the system is able to determine the impact locations on the target and provide data to construct a damage versus time profile. Further, the related art system has been modified to include additional sensors (i.e., pressure transducers, mechanical damage sensors, etc.) and improvements in weight, size and reliability.
The related art system suffers from several disadvantages. In particular, the impact location and damage sustained by a target object are information desired from a target impact. However, the related art system (without additional sensors) provides information pertaining only to the impact location (e.g., by measuring the optical fiber sever sequence and transmitting that data to a remote receiving station), thereby lacking provisions to collect damage information of the target object.
Although the related art system may include damage sensors as described above, the sensor information is reported in the order the information is received. Thus, internal damage sensor information competes with fiber optic grid information for telemetry bandwidth during an impact. This enables valuable information pertaining to the target impact to be lost due to lack of transmission of that information within the limited time interval available prior to target destruction.